Month: February 2020

oligarchs and cronies

Eat-the-rich: on Duterte’s anti-oligarch stance

February 29, 2020 by
E

Part of Duterte’s success is the fact that he says the right things, at the right time, specifically for his audience. This audience, of course, might not necessarily be us, who stand strongly against human rights violations, or repression, or state violence, or misogyny. But we barely matter. His audience is his base of supporters, who have been listening to him, who wait for him to speak, who hear him through his propagandists from Bong Go to Mocha Uson. These mouthpieces will deny they speak for him, but it won’t matter: they deliver the same rhetoric, in the same tenor, with basically the same content. It is all the absentee-President needs to stay afloat.  

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civil society

A Deeper, Broader Civil Society

February 14, 2020 by
A

Someone asked me once whether the Philippines had the equivalent of a ‘deep state.’ I told him I didn’t think so, not least because my impression of the bureaucracy is one of rent-maximizing machines with no coherent agenda, let alone one which could work to depose a sitting government. What we do have is what I would call an infrastructure of liberal democratic norms fully embedded in civil society, in part funded by and therefore implicated in the global liberal order. The latter may refer to big United Nations programs, for example the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are locally implemented. These are the non-governmental organizations who often advocate on specific policy issues – be it the environment, freedom of press or disaster management.

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disinformation and propaganda

Portrait of an Anonymous Influencer

February 5, 2020 by
P

28 year-old Georgina is a transgender digital marketer with a computer engineering degree from one of the leading national universities. She remembers getting her start in digital marketing work after being rejected many times over when interviewing for jobs directly related to her degree. With her long black hair, short-sleeved shirts, and soft-spoken tone, she felt she was never given a fair shot by interviewers in a male-dominated field, who were quick to assume she’s too maarte [fussy] to build or maintain computer hardware. She told us how she had to be especially resourceful in finding work and trying out specialized digital boutiques to find a stable source of income that could support her family, as well as her save up for her own transition and reassignment procedures.

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social / media

Media Madness on 2020’s First Month

February 1, 2020 by
M

Newsflash: Too many people felt that January was too long and that there was nothing new with the New Year. Many are petitioning for a restart of 2020 to this month, jokingly, of course, though they are not entirely silly, and their intentions are well-meaning. 2020 was supposed to be “the year of clarity” but its first 31 days was chaos, to say the least.

A quick rundown of the events which took place last month:

The assassination of Maj. General Qasem Soleimani, a “misfire” that caused a plane to crash, and the US, under Trump, almost declaring war with Iran; the massive bushfires in Australia, burning for the past six months, finally gaining global attention; the Taal Volcano suddenly steaming ash over parts of Luzon and the “imminent threat” of a magmatic eruption looming for weeks; in showbiz, a long-time loveteam denying an alleged break up, eventually breaking up for real, and the rumors that made a mess in between; the coronavirus, the scares and the helpless spectating as the President issued hardly a word, just as he did during the Taal crisis; and to close the month, less than 24 hours after LeBron James overtook his scoring record, basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash on their way to Mamba Acadamy in Thousand Oaks, California. Lest I be accused of not giving airtime to how government responded to this month of crisis, let’s not forget Little Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. going full on WWE kayfabe right outside his office, the President being petty about Senator Bato’s visa cancellation, and the administration launching “The Duterte Legacy”—sheesh.

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